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Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 Motherboard Review :: Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9
The GA-K8NF-9 board is based upon NVIDIA's nForce4 chipset. This board supports all current AMD Socket 939 CPUs including the FX-55 and 4000+ CPUs. AMD CPUs have the memory controller built-in allowing NVIDIA to use one chip, the MCP (Media Communications Processor) to handle the traditional North Bridge and South Bridge duties.
      Memory support on the K8NF-9 is provided by 4 184-pin DIMM (Dual In-line Memory Modules) slots for up to 4 GB of DDR memory. AMD does not at the moment support DDR2 memory (such support is likely to be added later this year.) The memory slots are color coded two purple slots and two orange slots. To install memory in dual-channel mode, you need to install identical memory in pairs in two like-colored slots.
Expansion slots on the K8NF-9 are varied as to be expected from a motherboard released in late 2004 and fairly typical of a nForce4 motherboard. Present is a PCI Express X16 slot for the video card. This replaced the AGP standard last year. Most video card manufacturers are now concentrating their video chipsets on the new standard, later adding a bridge chip to allow manufacturers to build AGP cards. Two PCI Express X1 slots and 3 regular PCI slots make the other expansion options for the K8NF-9.
Hard drive support on the K8NXP-SLI is also fairly typical. 4 SATA ports are present, allowing for up to 4 SATA devices to be attached. Two PATA ports and a Floppy disk port make up the other drive expansion options for this board. The NVIDIA MCP (Media Communications Processor) provides RAID support. The MCP supports RAID 0, 1, and 0+1 modes. Note, the nForce4 4X chip does not support SATA II. The K8NF-9 provides support for 2 IEEE-1394b (Firewire) devices and 6 USB 2.0 ports (Firewire and 2 USB port support provided by included cable).
A Realtek ALC850 CODEC provides onboard audio. This CODEC supports up to 8-channel surround sound and supports the main sound APIs including Creative's EAX 2.0 and DirectSound, the most common sound APIs used today. A nice touch on the board is Gigabyte included all of the Audio ports necessary for 8-channel sound on the back panel. Coaxial S/PDIF input/output jacks are included, as well as 4 Line-Out, 1 Line-In and a Mic jack.
      The back panel is varied. Four USB 2.0 ports are present, which is the norm today. A CICADA 8201 Phy provides support for Gigabit LAN on the K8NF-9. The standard PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports are present, though I use USB versions of both on my main computer. Rounding out the back panel are the already mentioned audio jacks, a COM port and a parallel port.
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